DOOR

When you left
it was as if
one wall of the house
was taken down

I walked out
through that large door
into the carnival
world

CHILDHOOD MEMORY 2

I am walking home from school at lunchtime. It is Friday. Two days before I was cycling. On that day, Wednesday, lunchtime, I saw a nun and a girl in uniform go into my friend’s house, which is the first house on our street. The blazer has broad blue stripes, in royal blue and sky blue. It is the uniform of my friend’s school. On Wednesday after school, another friend, 13, though middle-aged, at the corner store, shiny with news: 10 feet in the air, bike, drunk driver, Mater hospital, lunch-time. But on Friday at lunchtime I am walking home. As I draw close I walk more and more slowly. The curtains of the houses will say so. They will be open, like every time I have come home since Wednesday, or they will be closed. The curtains are closed. I walk past each house to my house and go in. My mother puts dinner on the table. It is fried potatoes. What was my mother thinking? What do I say now? Best just to get on with it. Slowly I eat my potatoes.

SWIMMING TOWARD THE MARGIN

                                        You                                 cast me off
                    but I come swimming back
               towards you
                    Not knowing if
          the beads I’m throwing off
                 Are sea spray
or sweat

PLAY IN 5 ACTS

I

I think about him.

2

He compliments my dress.

3

A centimeter (or less) of his skin touches a centimeter (or less) of my skin.

4

I leave.

5

I find I have taken something of his with me. Then I find he has left something of his among my things.

             FRIDA KAHLO 50 YEARS GONE TODAY TONIGHT TOMORROW


 BRAVE EYES                        MESTIZA
   PAINTING                        JUXTAPOSITA                        MAKER
WHAT’S THERE                   DIVIDITZA     FRIDA                OF
           &                                                      DON’T LET         BRILLIANT
  NOT THERE                                           NICKOLAS      PAIN MAPS
                                                         PLUCK
        FRIDA YOUR BROWS                 THOSE BROWS
        FRIDA YOUR HAIR                                                     
        YOUR UPPER LIP FRIDA                                                    fly little bird
        FRIDA YOUR CLOTHES                             THANK YOU
        YOUR RINGS FRIDA        YOU STRODE          FOR BUILDING
        YOUR EARRINGS         FROM YOUR NIGHT         A HISTORY
        YOUR NECKLACES         INTO OUR DAY            FOR US
                                         DRAGGING YOUR PAINTING
                                          TOWARD THE BEGINNING
                                                      OF PAINTING

             NO LESS THAN NELSON
                       HERO                                   DETROIT               NEAT GIRL
                    CONTRA                                TEHUANA                  WITH ROOTS
              BONAPARTE POLIO                    EGYPT                      WHO IS
              BONAPARTE BROKEN SPINE     ROME            THAT BALLOON ON A STRING
              BONAPARTE MARRIAGE                                  YOU CLING
              BONAPARTE MISCARRIAGE         WHOSE                 TO
              BONAPARTE AMPUTATION        EYES ARE
              BONAPARTE DEATH            LASHED BRUSHES:
                                                            FOUNDATION STONES
                                                                                 HAULED
     WHAT DID YOU DO                                                         FROM
                                                 CRIMS..                         ONE PAINTING
       WITH TROTSKY                                                               TO THE NEXT
                                             EMERA..              SWEET                            
          NAUGHTY                                      HANDS             
                              proof                       THAT
            GIRL       that                        ARE
                           beauty                  FRIDA’S
              ?           & brokenness
                            corruption & vitality                                YOUR BEST PIGMENT BLOOD
                                side-by-side                                          YOUR NEAT PALETTE HEART
     WHAT DID            thrive
                                               
   NOGUCHI                                                            
                                                 
         WITH YOU                          

                 ?

                                       & MANY MORE TO COME

SURREALIST MEN

                     took shortcuts

            to art

     through women's bodies

  not stopping

to cull

    human fruit

               or cradle

  or tend to it.

CHILDHOOD MEMORY

I wake up and the bunk bed is made of water. The tubular steel supports are bright cords of water. I slide down like a fireman except there is no red or yellow, no helmet, no stiff flaring jacket, no sound except for the rushing water. I walk through the door & the landing is also water, like one of those moving walkways in airports I realize now, but deep & clear & churned by the commotion of movement. I slip down the waterfall stairs clutching at each step for the water banisters & missing. I’m falling safely but terrified. Then I’m standing in the hall facing the white door of the sitting-room. Water runs in sheets all over the door & the walls of the hall & the beveled glass door of the kitchen & the terrazzo floor are all rushing away from me. The door of the sitting-room will not winnow into transparency. I put out my hand & push & the door backs away & the sitting-room is delivered to me, a slice, an arc, a wobbly 360° and the white faces of my father & mother & the visitors slowly turning. They look like walruses. Supper is spread on a gold and black trolley. The coiled wire element of the electric fire is bright orange with heat. The doctor comes. I lie on the couch & things begin to dry up. My mother mops up the puddles. I see that the house is not made of water but death.

POLITE INTEREST

I saw in the Providence Phoenix that Henry Gould & I were reading in Tazza last Tuesday.
Wonder how it went.

FROM THE AIR

I see the city’s pain map. It’s not as I thought. Yes, great sections are hatched with scribbled oils, scored deep, but bold suns shine there too, like rude billiard balls, & there are thousands of them, insufficiently camouflaged. And of course the hospitals, the schools, the prisons, the police stations are plunged—but not in total darkness, not quite. Even the Family Court is not completely guttered out. And the burnished shores of the East Side, descending in terraces, are tarnished too. Nothing has edges. Nothing is free of dusk or gold. The whole city is a scattered highway: incessant gold orbs forced into black air & roped to a permanently repressed scream. Only the cemeteries are unvariegated, slick spills of milky greyness, pulsing faintly like a fledgeling’s throat.

FEAR

I’m not sure what is my country. I not sure what is my book. If book print-on-demand where
publisher? Met on web. Have passport though. Lost property. Claim me. What is chapbook if one
poem only? Is festival annual journal or periodical? Will APR slay me/heap contempt?
What say—well you know the way/us poets/how it is/just getting by/then will they sneer?
Ruined chances forever. Help. But what is poems on line and why do I publish books first then
poems? Or anthologize. E-zine publishes poems first: only those not in e-book due next. Am I
Irish poet? Is Australian webzine Australian or web? How to know. Whom to ask. Google? Google?

RED LETTER DAY

Well, today was a red letter day because the team of experts I have wanted so long finally arrived. After all this time it just happened. A doorbell ping & they clomped in. You could have knocked me down with a feather. They were all there: The plumber, the electrician, the car mechanic, the carpenter, the lead paint woman, the swim instructor, the HTML woman, the sound system guy, the therapist, the ethicist, the contractor, the gardener, the tax guy, the retirement guy, the doc, the vet, the wise guy, the trainer, and the consultant—just in case all the bases aren’t covered. It got quite dark when they all trooped in, but I was smiling fit to burst. It was quite the party. Things are finally gonna get moving around here. They’ve just gone out for pizza so I grabbed time to write this. Now I've got to make up some beds.

                 WHEN YOU KISS THE WORLD

in a poem

             you take its long throat

           & fuck

so deep

you come

          out

          laughing

straight up

       into

               the bright face

                      of

                    God

ANYTHING

the poem is an aquarium
              set into the page
                   populated by every glittering fish
                 in my Webster's Dictionary
               still in a box somewhere—or

        Google

                   fast-swimming streaks of purposeful purposelessness

Porpoises
          leaping
                   frolicking like the rubber frisbees they are
                    peeling from the sea-floor
                up the walls of a room
              spun from 5 threads:

                  hectic
                  fervent
                  damask
                  brocade
                  brain

& each time the page turns
                a great fluke
          sucking
       free

of a square-cut engagement ring

                BIG CREATURE
        LITTLE CREATURE

napping
           one
       with limbs
    barely knotted

       the other
           a big loose question-mark
              the shadow of whose answer
           has just reached
       her shores

GAMBLE

In the morning
   I gather my forces &
      put my money on poetry

I go out
   with two cupped hands
      putting my money on poetry

Back home
   huffing through every room
       I put every last cent on poetry

Down the long nights
   I drum my impatient fingers
       putting all my money on poetry

MBTA

You get everything you need on the train.
Tickets are free on the train.
Ticket collectors joke on the train.
People leave newspapers on the train.
You can take your pick of seats on the train.
Your hands are free on the train.
You don’t have to drive on the train.
You don’t have to look out the windows.
You can concentrate on the train.
And move at the same time.
Work is not work on the train.
Work is forward motion on the train.
Work is a miracle on the train.
A free crop. Extra. Bonus. Free ride.
Everything is free on the train.
Even the wet sneeze of an invisible passenger
Which we all catch with an exultant BLESS YOU!

THIS HOUSE

both
host & chalice
nutritious
overrunneth
with
sun

BLOG

What is a blog
but a blah and an og
a robust log
for inside elbows to wrap
pulling strong black bark
into water-logged winter-coat
when you fall in a river
what is a blog but an oh my god
a bleh and a lo and a glob
spun by peeled finger-tip
& swung
over playground mulch
& held
in luminous grey canoes
called eyes

SPRING CLEANING

I'm tired of writing
with pieces of heart pulp
all over my desk

PLANS

The house is gorgeous.
No really.
It’s got good bones
& if I ever get the money
I’ll fix it up
& then I’ll fix up the neighborhood
& then I'll scour misery from every house in this street
& then I’ll break off the cakes of scabs from all the other streets in this flagrant city
& then I’ll hose everything & everyone down
& we’ll be like shrieking boys under Brooklyn hydrants maddened by spray & shine
& then I’ll clean up this whole fucking world
this bleeding mess
& then I’ll enter the Miss World contest
& win.

A SOBERING INCIDENT

Once when we were walking home from my younger daughter’s school in the dark, she wanted to play Baby-Kitten and Mama-Cat Going Through the Forest. My mind was in a deep mull and when she screamed Mama Cat the dogs are chasing me! apparently I said Woof-Woof. I said it twice it seems. That was the end of that game. She took it hard. She’s an intelligent child and probably discerned the implications. Next morning however, she was able to refer to it wryly, having grown up a little, perhaps, in the night.